Nation - Arkansas Court upholds state's lethal injection protocol

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- A federal appeals court upheld Arkansas' lethal injection protocol Monday, rejecting condemned inmates' claims that the three-drug cocktail puts them at risk of excruciating pain before dying. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision comes a month before Arkansas is scheduled to execute its first inmate in five years. Jack Harold Jones Jr., one of the death-row inmates challenging the procedure, is set to die March 16 for the slaying of a Bald Knob bookkeeper and an attack on her young daughter. Jones and two other inmates sued the state over its execution procedure, but a federal judge in 2008 threw out the suit, a decision upheld Monday by the federal appeals court. "Based on our review of Arkansas' lethal injection protocol, we conclude that it is designed to avoid the needless infliction of pain, not to cause it," the court said. Arkansas uses the same drug combination as more than 30 other states -- an anesthetic, a muscle paralyzer and a substance to stop the heart. The inmates' suit said the Department of Correction botched at least four executions, including the 1992 death of 40-year-old Rickey Ray Rector, who could be heard groaning for almost 20 minutes before workers pulled back the curtain shielding the execution chamber. An autopsy found 10 puncture marks where the execution team tried to insert IV lines, and showed that executioners likely cut into muscle on his right arm to find a vein. The federal appeals court said those four executions weren't carried out under Arkansas' current protocol, which prohibits an executioner from injecting the fatal drugs before the inmate is fully unconscious. The court said that Arkansas' three-drug protocol is "substantially similar to -- and perhaps even more thorough than" a Kentucky procedure upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. "The Arkansas protocol goes even further than the Kentucky protocol by requiring IV team members to have at least two years of professional experience," the opinion said. Scott Braden, who represented the inmates before the 8th Circuit, declined to comment Monday on the decision. But in arguments before the panel last year, Braden said that even with new methods in place, the process can cause pain and suffering. "If the IV isn't established correctly, the inmate suffers excruciating pain with the two lethal chemicals," Braden said last year. "You, in a sense, drown." Published: Thu, Feb 11, 2010

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